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Posts tagged with the category Gary Metcalf

Complexity, Sustainability, and Narrative

Sorting out complexity is, by nature, difficult. When we talk about complexity we tend to mean something beyond normal, regular, or average. Even agreeing on definitions is problematic.
A search of the “systemspedia” in the online library of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence found 362 entries related to...

A Painful Goodbye: End-of-Life Care in the U.S. Healthcare System

The difficulties around healthcare in the U.S. remain as complex as ever. I have spent the last two months experiencing those in a very personal way.
Twenty-two years ago, a close family member—let’s call her Millie—was diagnosed with cancer and given a poor prognosis. She beat the odds and survived. This summer, she was...

Education as... Discretionary Spending?

A mid-August posting by Jeff Selingo, editorial director of The Chronicle of Higher Education, described three key issues facing administrators in higher education in the U.S. What he referred to as the "trifecta" that had to be kept in balance involved "rising tuition discount rates, flat or falling net tuition revenue, and...

Simplifying Complexity in Politics: Healthcare

With the coming of another U.S. presidential election, we are faced once again with a barrage of over-simplified explanations about increasingly complex problems. And with the choice of Paul Ryan as the vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party, it seems that healthcare will be front-and-center in the ads and speeches. He obviously didn...